Boeing-Skyhook Airship Faces Technical Challenges

waderoush writes "Since the Hindenburg disaster, dreams of giant airships capable of lifting heavy cargo have been restricted mainly to Popular Science covers (with the notable exception of the Cargolifter AG failure) — until Boeing and a Canadian company called Skyhook announced on July 8 that they're building a 300-foot-long, helium-filled craft that will lift loads of up to 40 tons and carry them 200 miles. But an aeronautical engineer at the University of Washington cautions that there are still some big problems to be worked out with mega-airships, including their stability in turbulent weather."

Comments

Re:Where's the beef?

[Deadstick]

and it's not as if we don't have strategies in place to deal with turbulence

We certainly do. The one for aerostatically-suspended vehicles is "Fly in nice weather".

An airplane suspends itself entirely with aerodynamic force, which the pilot can manipulate to a high degree and on a very short time scale. Hit a downward bump, pull back a little on the stick, lift increases, flight path remains nearly constant.

An airship suspends itself principally with an aerostatic force which can't be modified very much, and maintains the desired flight path with relatively small aerodynamic forces which are manipulated in the same way as an airplane. The latter forces just don't have enough range to deal with serious turbulence.

Besides making maneuvering difficult or impossible, turbulence presents another threat: stress. While the aerodynamic forces the pilot can apply are small, the ones a thunderstorm can apply are not. Aerodynamic forces depend on the surface area of an object, and the surface area of an airship is huge. Big forces, big stresses on a necessarily lightweight structure.

rj

Re:Helium Crisis Approaching

[b0s0z0ku]

It could use hydrogen gasbags within an envelope filled with pure nitrogen to prevent mixing with air and combustion. Technology has come a long way since the Hindenburg, and hydrogen airships could be made safe. (BTW, some theories state that the Hindenburg accident wasn't caused directly by the hydrogen gas but by the fact that the ship was painted with a flammable aluminium-based paint).

-b.

Re:Oblig. Simpsons

[DaedalusHKX]

Ironically, when the Hindenburg (which was among a tiny minority of airships that actually crashed) wrecked, a scant few people were killed, a couple injured, and the rest survived. When an airliner crashes... well, survival chances are... not quite as good. So lets get it right, if an airliner pilot wrecks the plane, you're fairly likely to DIE. If a zeppelin or something to that effect crashes, you've got a fairly good chance to tell a "wow look at me" story about your "shipwreck adventure" which is probably why the Hindenburg got such note...

Do your own research on the subject, but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic). Either way, hopefully you'll dig up your own research on the subject.